Despite the raid and indictment that shut down Megaupload, its founder Kim Dotcom continues to dream up new file-storage services, even while he remains under indictment awaiting extradition from New Zealand to the US to face criminal copyright charges.

A new service he plans to launch by the end of the year, called simply "Mega," will allow users to share files that are encrypted with a key that the Mega service will never have. That way, only users and app developers will control access to files.

"If servers are lost, if the government comes into a data center and rapes it, if someone hacks the server or steals it, it would give him nothing," Dotcom said in an interview with Wired about the new service. "Whatever is uploaded to the site, it is going to be remain closed and private without the key."

All the data will be stored on two sets of servers in two different countries, so the service would be harder to shut down if authorities tried to physically take the servers like the government did in the US. Ultimately, Dotcom envisions a service distributed on thousands of servers throughout the world.

This isn't the first new service Dotcom has promised to launch since Megaupload was shut down; he started talking about a music-sharing service called Megabox back in June, but that still has yet to launch.

58 Reader Comments

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but Kim's going to create a what will essentially be a file sharing version of Freenet? Interesting. Would like to see this materialize if his plans ever get off the ground.

So the idea is that you post a link to the file, and then post the key to the file at the same time?

Interesting. Kim will have a hard time finding a host for it this time around, after what happened to Carpathia.

I'm sure there's plenty of hosts in countries that are willing to host his service and will give US authorities a harder time. But I doubt there will be servers in the US or the Netherlands again as the seizures were coordinated flawlessly.

Though the legal basis for the seizures is rather shaky and I find that Carpathia is due some compensation if the whole affair doesn't pan out.

If I was him I'd take it all the way to its logical conclusion. Split files inexorably up between a hundred servers all over the world, and scramble them such that there's little to nothing on each server that resembles specific content. Seizing any server produces nothing discernable, let alone infringing.

Heck, there's another level here. Create a content system that actually munges content files together, with key-based algorithmic paths through the file (such that each file is munged differently than every other) to play back content. Wrap it all in a non-observable product so that nobody can track the progress of the system through the file (reading random portions, only some of which are real content). Different keys produce different outputs from the same file.

The recording industries aren't going to stop using police and governments, and start competing, until they have to. Innovation like this forces their hand.

If what he's proposing is innovative then the bar must be pretty low then?

It's all relative, I guess. It's still way higher than anything coming from big content. Ever more innovative ways to not address the real problem they face -- that their product has in many ways become a commodity, not through a lack of distinction, but because of the ease of reproduction and distribution.

And why will this be any different than what you get from SpiderOak now?? Because it will be MEGA...But seriously, SpiderOak does exactly that. Only you - the owner of the data - have the key to decrypt it. And you can share the content with anyone by generating special sharing link. SpiderOak is agnostic to what is on their servers because even if they would like to they wouldn't be able to access the data.

Edit.

And you get 2GB for free (and can create multiple accounts). And have nice management desktop software. And and and...

This sounds like an excellent idea. In my opinion the MPAA, RIAA and other such agencies have far too much power and this seems to be only because of the extremely weird American political habit of lobbying not to say that corruption would not exist otherwise but maybe it would not be so easy for these big companies to push all these laws and arrange illegal raids across the world.

Sounds pretty reasonable actually, more resistant to litigation and all content creators would need is the key to prove infringment for a DMCA takedown notice.

The sole advantage here seems to be that "Mega" can't be required to proactively search for infringing files (since they can't read the files). As I recall the guv'mnt claims that taking down specific files identified in a takedown notice is not enough, and Megaupload should have searched for other instances of the files in question on their servers.

That this is necessary seems kind of sad to me. Surely It should be sufficient to just move the servers off shore for DMCA or any other American law to become irrelevant. If users are in the U.S. and they break U.S. law then go after them, not the offshore service they are using. I wonder how the U.S. govt. would respond if e.g. a middle eastern country tried to go after a operators of a U.S. website etc. for blasphemy, indecency, etc., on the grounds that many users of the service were in their country? Not too well I imagine.

Many users of file lockers like Megaupload seem to routinely encrypt anyway (by uploading password protected .rar files). Just seems like common sense to me, even ignoring any copyright issues.

Edit:

Putrid Polecat wrote:

Will mega allow searching through all the shared files? If so they may still have liability issues. Otherwise what he is proposing is merely encrypted cloud storage.

Will mega allow searching through all the shared files? If so they may still have liability issues. Otherwise what he is proposing is merely encrypted cloud storage.

All he was offering before was unencrypted cloud storage.

An encrypted distributed cloud storage is impenetrable to legal liability issuesBecause the key is in user's hands, and not stored in plaintext on the server and not known by the people running the server. In such case, as long as the users don't publish illegal files over public forums the files are safe, and even if they do, it merely warrants DCMA takedown notices.

He has a big mouth. Talks too much. Paranoid. Will never get off the ground.

Nah people like Kim Dotcom have no problems when it comes to making money. He did it once and he'll do it again. Still the big problem is Megaupload should have never been shut down in the first place. They gave copyright holders a hell of a lot more power to remove illegal content than almost any other service on the web.

Now there is a wave of new host coming out of the wood works and files are being scattered pretty much everywhere making it even harder to keep up with than before. They're holding LEGAL data of millions on the Megaupload servers with zero rights to do so. Preventing people from having access to pirated files that exist in many other places is absurd.

It might sound stupid that some people uploaded their only copy of a file to Megaupload then deleted it from their computer to save space or whatever. They should have been concerned of course because there are plenty of things that can go wrong. Hardware failures,system glitches,accidental account deletion but the US government stealing their shit to please Hollywood should have been the least of their worries.

So what's preventing the feds from seizing the domain name for this service and again blocking acess to the content?

They can only seize US Domains (.com .net. .org ). There are plenty of other left.

Other countries can seize those domains also, which leaves you with a very small set of domain extensions, people will actually trust.

You cannot pay me enough to go to a website that have certain domain extensions, known to host 98% of the world's spam websites, for the simple fact 98% of the websites ending in that extension are spam websites.

It's all relative, I guess. It's still way higher than anything coming from big content. Ever more innovative ways to not address the real problem they face -- that their product has in many ways become a commodity, not through a lack of distinction, but because of the ease of reproduction and distribution.

That's true... have you listened to popular radio lately? It all sounds the same... very few performers are distinctive, innovative or compelling. It's like movies... remake treasured movies from 30 years ago (or really bad takes on old TV shows), dumb them down with bad acting add as much filth as you can... presto. You have Bad News Bears or it's ilk.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but Kim's going to create a what will essentially be a file sharing version of Freenet? Interesting. Would like to see this materialize if his plans ever get off the ground.

Only in mild similarities.

Freenet also makes it so others can't tell if you're the one requesting the file and is decentralized.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but Kim's going to create a what will essentially be a file sharing version of Freenet? Interesting. Would like to see this materialize if his plans ever get off the ground.

Only in mild similarities.

Freenet also makes it so others can't tell if you're the one requesting the file and is decentralized.

The recording industries aren't going to stop using police and governments, and start competing, until they have to. Innovation like this forces their hand.

If what he's proposing is innovative then the bar must be pretty low then?

Well, is a service which provide storage with integrated client side encryption/decription (i.e easy to use) already available?AFAIK no, currently you have to do the encryption/decryption yourself, so it is new/innovative.

I don't advocate illegal downloading, but I hate the heavy handed lawsuit approach the big content folks use even more. I too am curious to see how this unfolds, as some part of me really wants big content to fail in their attempts to control the internet. I can't help but think "F*ck those greedy big content bastards, they can't control every thing!", but I keep that to myself mostly.

Kim Dotcom is so not the guy I want to be representing my side in this war (ie: too easy for the other side to caricature and demonize). But he has the resources and seems emboldened after everything they've done to him so far, so best of luck to him.

Sounds pretty reasonable actually, more resistant to litigation and all content creators would need is the key to prove infringment for a DMCA takedown notice.

This is what I'm unclear on. If you're trying to use this service to fileshare something copyrighted like a film or music, then you need to make the decryption key publicly available otherwise there's no point. Assuming there's people out there whose job it is is to find such sites, they'll know where to look to find the keys for filesharing useing this service.

Which would seem to possibly put this Kim twat right back where he started (if they keys are publicly available, then aren't they available to his organisation too ?), and simultaneously act as a severe setback to casual piracy anyway.

It's all relative, I guess. It's still way higher than anything coming from big content. Ever more innovative ways to not address the real problem they face -- that their product has in many ways become a commodity, not through a lack of distinction, but because of the ease of reproduction and distribution.

That's true... have you listened to popular radio lately? It all sounds the same... very few performers are distinctive, innovative or compelling. It's like movies... remake treasured movies from 30 years ago (or really bad takes on old TV shows), dumb them down with bad acting add as much filth as you can... presto. You have Bad News Bears or it's ilk.

Troubling, isn't it? The same could be said for the current crop of politicians in the USA (and I mean that completely non-partisan). Aside from the technological gains, we appear to be living in an era of mediocrity...